November 3, 2006

This morning I finished packing up my bags, and found out that everything that I need to take home does indeed fit into my two suitcases and my backpack. I am going to have to leave several things behind, but those are things I had planned to leave behind/throw out: my blanket, my pillows, an extra towel, some school supplies, and, well, that's pretty much it. The rest all fits in my bags and is all stuff I want to take home. :) When I got everything all packed in, I looked around my room and thought about how weird it was that I could fit a whole semester of my life into two suitcases. Back home I take two car-fulls of stuff to my dorm... but I guess I don't really pack it as neatly when I do that, and also I have a civic, so you can't really fit too much in there anyway. :-P But yeah, I've realized that when you do a lot of traveling, you start to realize what you need, and what you really don't need. In a college dorm, two suitcases is all you really need. And when you're just traveling somewhere for a week or two (like New Zealand), one suitcase is plenty.

I jogged around the lake again this evening. No rain this time, but it was mostly cloudy still. It really smells good after a rain... the increased humidity in the air and the smell of moist vegetation and soil is something I had forgotten about. It makes the landscape seem a lot less bland when you can smell it too.

November 2, 2006

Today was cloudy and rainy, which seems to be quite unusual here in Australia; even more unusual was some of the rain came in the form of thunderstorms! It seemed kind of weird to hear thunder here since I never have before. I guess it's getting close to summer though, and thunderstorms need heat to brew. The thunderstorms were pretty wimpy though. I only really heard two or three claps of thunder, none of which were terribly loud, I never saw any lightning, and the rain was only moderate. It was really windy though. :)

This afternoon I went for a run around Lake Ginninderra. When I was about 10 minutes away from returning, it started to sprinkle and by the time I got back I was almost completely wet. It actually felt pretty good getting rained on in a run (It was in the upper 60s). It's so dry here that I had forgotten that running in the rain (or waiting for the rain to pass before I run) is a common occurrence back home.

This evening I went to the mall to get a few more grocery items (such as some fresh veggies), and ran into Sam, Hannah, and Amy at Subway on the way there. I talked to Hannah and we agreed that she's going to end up taking one of my suitcases to Sydney with her this weekend when she goes home, and then I'll go to her house to get it when I fly back into Sydney the day before I fly home. Tonight I decided to start packing up my room, at least what I'm going to send to Sydney. I got that suitcase filled up and then decided to call it a night. I think tomorrow I'll pack up the rest of my room, just to see if it all fits into two suitcases (because that's all I have!), and also because I need to see how room it will take to fit in all the stuff I'm taking to New Zealand.

November 1, 2006

It's November! I go home in November!! Another weekish here in Australia then a little over a week in New Zealand and it'll be time to go home!!

Much of yesterday (Halloween, if they celebrated it here) I spent studying for today's final exam in my introduction to exercise science class. In the middle of the afternoon, Amanda came to my door and informed me that I had a package slip in the mail (All of us exchange students got shared mailboxes, and she shares my mailbox). I went up right then to the post office on campus and picked up my package -- it was from Rachel!! It was a package that she had sent me quite a while ago, actually... the post-mark was August 9, 2006! So yeah, it took over 2.5 months to get here! It had a label on it about being opened by quarantine, and quarantine documents being enclosed (Australia's really strict with what they'll let into the country). The package was kinda smashed, but it turns out all of the contents were still ok. Except, that is, for a microwave bag of popcorn that Rachel had sent me. Apparently Quarantine didn't like that, so they took the popcorn when the package arrived in Sydney on October 27th, and the enclosed documents informed me that if I wished to have the item returned to sender, it would cost me $42, but otherwise they would destroy the item in 30 days "free of charge". Hahaha! I asked Rachel what she wanted me to do, and she said she didn't want it back that badly. :-P I think it's all rather amusing, and I'm keeping the quarantine documents as a souvenir. :) The package consisted of a card, a photo, a small watercolor painting of my favorite bird, and some snacks and candy. :) Thanks Rachel! Getting the package made my day. :)

Note: Please, nobody send me any mail at this point. Letters take 1-2 weeks to get here, and packages take apparently up to 3 months. I'm turning in my mailbox key in a week, so I won't be able to receive anything after that. I hope nobody else sent me any packages recently, because it seems like there's a 0.01% chance that I'd actually get it before I went home!

So today I had my first of two final exams here at UC, as I mentioned earlier. It was a new experience for me, being quite unlike any other final I've ever taken. The final was in the gymnasium, where there were four sections filled with chairs and desks, covering the entire gym floor. Upon entering the room, they checked my student ID. I was then "ushered" to my desk, in the exercise science section. Once it was time to begin, a lady with a microphone announced all of the instructions for all of the exams; specific instructions for my class was that nobody was to leave until the examination period (one hour) was up. It turns out I ended up finishing with a good 30 minutes to spare, so I sat there, bored. By the time the time was up, almost everyone had already completed their exams and were just sitting there waiting to leave. Finally when the lady announced that everyone was to stop writing immediately, she also instructed us to all remain quietly seated. It took another 5-10 minutes for all of the exams to be collected by the ushers, and then counted to make sure they were all turned in. Finally they let us go out the side exit doors. It was a very organized event, but one in which there was a significant chunk of wasted time (for me at least), and all together it was way different than any exam I have ever taken! I'm not sure how I did, except I would bet that I at least passed. Time will tell!

I skipped running this afternoon to go to an extra tutorial that my data analysis in science tutor held for us, so that we could get some practice with things we haven't quite mastered, but will be on the final. It was a good tutorial, and I learned a few things that will definitely help me on the final. I've got a week to study now for that one. I think I'll take a day or two off from studying and get with it after that.

This evening I cooked dinner really late. It wasn't until 9:30 that I actually began eating, because I prepared a fairly elaborate dish, on top of not getting back to my room until 7:40. I'm trying to use up all of the food I have before I leave, so I get my moneys worth from my groceries. :) Anyway, I had this can of cooked lentils, and I didn't know what to do with them... so I decided to experiment. I also had a bunch of rice still, so I decided I would cook up the rice, and maybe somehow do something where the lentils could go with it. While the rice was cooking, I got out a frying pan and some veggies from my fridge and started making a sort of stir-fry, by frying up some onion, bell pepper, green beans, and carrots. Once they were cooked a little bit, I decided to add the can of lentils to the frying pan and see what happened. Sam was cooking dinner at the same time, and he had some worcestershire sauce, so I decided to add a little to my lentils and veggies. A minute or two of simmering and my meal was done. I ended up having the lentils+veggies on top of rice, much like a stir fry, and it turned out to be really good! I even let Sam try some, and he said he liked it too. It's funny what comes out when you take a bunch of food and just start throwing it into a frying pan.